Digital Lifescapes

As we approach 2025, the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is poised for significant growth. Traditional AI spending is rising, while Generative AI (GenAI) struggles to meet lofty expectations. This apparent dichotomy presents challenges and opportunities for vendors and business leaders navigating the complex world of AI implementation. Let's explore the overall situation. Traditional AI: A Pragmatic Approach In the coming year, we expect to see a surge in traditional AI spending as enterprises seek pragmatic, ROI-driven solutions. This trend is driven by a growing recognition of the limitations and risks associated with GenAI projects, which have shown alarmingly high failure rates of 80 to 90 percent in proof-of-concept stages. The trend towards traditional AI is further supported by data from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which revealed that over 85 percent of AI projects in 2024 were not based on GenAI.  This insightful statistic underscores the continued relevance and ...

As an independent advisory consultant with experience across the technology sector, I've observed the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on various industries across the globe. The recent IDC market study of AI in Europe provides valuable insights. The forecast AI spending in Europe will reach $133 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.3 percent, underscores the significant momentum behind AI adoption. This substantial investment reflects the increasing recognition of AI's potential to enhance productivity, drive innovation, and create new business model opportunities. Generative AI Market Development While AI itself is not a new concept, the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) has catalyzed a new wave of excitement and investment. GenAI's ability to create content, from text to images and even code, has captured the imagination of businesses and consumers alike. The IDC market study highlights the exceptional growth expected in...

The way we work is undergoing huge changes. Technological advancements like automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing are fundamentally altering the landscape of office worker employment. Business leaders are grappling with a new reality: the talent skills gap between their current knowledge workers and the growing demands of digital transformation raising the bar of expectations. A recent  International Data Corporation (IDC) survey of North American IT leaders uncovered the latest employee learning and development insights. Nearly two-thirds of respondents reported that a lack of critical skills has resulted in missed revenue growth objectives, quality problems, and a decline in customer satisfaction. These issues represent a significant drag on a company's top and bottom lines. Future of Work Apps Market Development "Getting the right people with the right skills into the right roles has never been so difficult," said Gina Smith, PhD, research direc...

Digital Transformation has been the focal point for savvy enterprise C-suites and IT organizations hoping to gain competitive advantages by modernizing their core business processes with technology. The goal was to become a Digital Business where value creation is based on new processes, products, services, and customer experiences. Now, the Digital Business era is everywhere.  Companies are seeking new digital revenue streams while transforming operations to reduce costs and increase efficiency. For the CEOs at forward-looking organizations, 2024 will be pivotal. Digital Business Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by IDC, spending on digital business technologies is growing while traditional investment is stagnating or even declining. Demand for digital experiences from customers, employees, partners, and suppliers is pervasive. "Digital transformation was only the first step -- to truly gain value from change, companies need to move to an innovativ...

Forward-thinking CEOs create a digital business transformation agenda. They're eager to develop and deploy new digital business models. However, their IT team often lacks the skills and experience to reach key business outcome objectives. There's growing demand for skilled digital talent in 2023, and beyond. As a result, 81 percent of large enterprise (LE) CIOs plan to increase their IT headcount in 2023, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Meanwhile, only 14 percent expect their IT staff to decrease and 5 percent expect their headcount to remain the same. Enterprise IT Talent Market Development "Attracting and retaining technology talent remain critical areas of concern for CIOs," said Jose Ramirez, senior principal analyst at  Gartner . Even with advances in artificial intelligence (AI), Gartner predicts that the global job impact will be neutral in the next several years due to enterprise adoption lags, implementation times and learning curve...

More CIOs and CTOs are exploring ways to accelerate the development of new software apps that enable the kind of digital transformation benefits that all senior executives crave. One emerging solution is to empower business leaders with tools to create new apps themselves. The global market for low-code, no-code, and intelligent developer technologies (LCNCIDT) continues to grow at a rapid pace, with revenue projected to reach $21 billion by 2026, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Intelligent Developer Technology Market Development "The market for LCNCDIT technologies is being driven by the global shortage of full-time developers," said Michele Rosen, research manager at IDC . "This situation is expected to continue throughout this decade, creating a strong market for technologies that increase developer productivity or expand the potential pool of developers." The LCNCIDT market includes low-code, no-code, and i...

More CTOs are being tasked to assess the commercial applications of augmented and virtual reality technologies. These systems are increasingly being applied, due to their ability to provide immersive training environments, accurately simulate dangerous situations, and avoid costly travel and equipment-related expenses. In many cases, consumer electronics Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, controllers, and tracking systems can be used in commercial settings with few modifications. That being said, it's likely that ruggedized versions of these products will be introduced for these situations. Commercial VR Market Development According to the ABI assessment, industries with high-risk working environments -- such as energy, industrial and manufacturing or construction -- are currently the early adopters of enterprise VR training applications. Technician training in industries such as the energy sector can be perilous, mainly due to the nature of the job where technicians work on of...

In hindsight, the reported ongoing IT security breaches during 2015 have paved the way for a significant cyber security solutions marketplace in 2016 and beyond. Savvy IT leaders have already started to address the need for real-time policy updates, ongoing employee training and an evolving systems architecture. Data trends show that the global cyber threat and Vulnerability Management (VM) market is expected to grow from $5.3 billion in 2015 to $8.6 billion in 2020, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research . This study was launched to uncover the commercial implications of newly discovered ICT security vulnerabilities, while also assessing current solutions to the known people, process and technology-related challenges that most CIOs must address with proactive enterprise security measures. "Each day, organizations are deluged with warnings about newly discovered security vulnerabilities," says Monolina Sen, senior analyst at ABI Research. "W...